Hiring ban rescues workers from exploitation

Hiring ban rescues workers from exploitation

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The current hiring ban imposed on Indonesian workers by the
Taiwan Council of Labor Affairs may be a blow to the cash-
strapped Indonesia, but it could save tens of thousands of the
country's migrant workers from further exploitation.

Workers leaving for Taiwan are usually promised average
monthly salaries of NT$15,000 (US$450 or about Rp 4.3 million),
but they rarely receive the full amount.

Sarinah, an Indonesian who has worked as a maid in Taiwan for
two and half years, wrote in a letter made available to The
Jakarta Post on Saturday that she has never received her complete
salary of NT$15,840.

She said that numerous deductions were taken from her salary,
including for medical insurance, residential fees, taxes,
security insurance, the service fee for her local agent and the
fee for her Indonesian labor broker.

"I was supposed to only have to pay the brokers for my first
14 months here, but it was extended to 21 months," Sarinah wrote.

Paul Minggo, chairman of the Taindo Autonomy Council, an
organization of Indonesian labor agents for Taiwan, said on
Saturday the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration had
established a new regulation allowing Taiwan labor agents
(PJTKAs) to collect NT$1,800 from each migrant worker. It also
allows Indonesian labor brokers (PJTKIs) to charge NT$1,500 in
agency fees for each migrant sent to Taiwan.

The ministry also allows monthly salary deductions of NT$3,965
for 21 months, while PJTKAs generally seek to deduct NT$10,000
each month for 15 months.

On top of that, the Indonesian government requires the migrant
workers to send home a minimum of NT$3,000 every month, and if
the workers do not remit this money their Taiwan labor agents can
lose their right to recruit workers here.

This regulation has prompted authorities in Taiwan to freeze
the hiring of Indonesian workers until Jakarta changes this
regulation.

The Taipei Economic and Trade Office in Jakarta said in a news
release that the mandatory NT$3,000 monthly remittance violated
Taiwan's labor law.

"This is against the law in Taiwan and violates the rights of
migrant workers and their local agents. This also makes the
migrant workers break their contracts and run away from their
jobs, and it troubles many local employers," Kuo-Fang Ie,
director general of the council's Employment and Vocational
Training Department, said in the statement.

Data compiled from the Council of Labor Affairs, Executive
Yuan and the National Police Administration of Taiwan shows that
3,277 Indonesian workers broke their contracts and left their
jobs from March last year to March this year.

Soeramsihono, the director general of migrant workers at the
Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, was unavailable for
comment as he was in the hospital with heart problems.

Kuo-Fang Ie did not say when the hiring freeze might be
lifted.

"No date will be set for the lifting of the ban and no
applications from Indonesian laborers will be approved (until the
ban is lifted)," Kuo said.

This freeze has left at least 7,000 prospective migrant
workers, some 85 percent of them women, stranded in temporary
shelters in Jakarta awaiting their departure to Taiwan.

"Most of them have been waiting between two and six months and
they have no idea about when they will fly to Taipei, because
usually the more they pay the faster they can go," Paryono of the
National Network of Indonesian Migrant Workers said.

Christine, a labor broker, said prospective migrant workers
looking for work as maids were required to pay their agents some
Rp 1 million, while factory workers paid Rp 28 million.

"This is ironic. On the one hand we need the migrant workers
to bring foreign exchange into the country, but on the other hand
our (migrant) workers have just become cash machines for the
'labor mafia' here," Carla, chairwoman of the Center for
Indonesian Migrant Workers, told the Post on Saturday.

Currently, some 96,971 Indonesians working in Taiwan as maids,
construction workers, factory workers and caretakers for the
elderly, send about Rp 600 billion back to Indonesian monthly.